From last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume:

—On Robert Gates—

MORT KONDRACKE: I don’t think he’s the guy that the Democrats think he will be. . . . I think the reason that they confirmed him so quickly is that they wanted Rumsfeld out the door forthwith and certainly Gates was frank, if nothing else, about the failures of Don Rumsfeld.
FRED BARNES: What Gates was was an ideal witness. He’s perfect. He knows Washington, he’s been here, he knew how to deal with these senators. So what you do is one, you’re independent. Two, you say, well, you know, I’m certainly going to consult Congress . . . and the other thing you say is well, I’ll consider all ideas. Everything’s on the table. I’ll consider everything. Now, that’s what you tell in a confirmation hearing, that’s what you tell these senators, Republicans and Democrats, doesn’t make any difference. They both lap it up and it works, and we saw how well it works.
I think, the truth is, [he agrees] that going into Iraq was the right thing [and] thinks victory is what we should go after, not retreat . . .
BARNES: One of the most interesting things he said, though, was in response to John McCain when he said, “When I was over with the Iraq Study Group,” which he was part of in the beginning in Iraq, “and we talked to the generals, none of the generals said we need more troops.”
HUME: Well, doesn’t it, in the end, depend upon whether the goal is for the United States to go in and take control of Iraq in a way it has never before, with an occupation — with a level of occupation heretofore, unseen and perhaps a level of martial law, heretofore, untried on a democratic country or whether it is the idea that the U.S. should enable the Iraqis to take charge?
MARA LIASSON: And Gates, himself, said that Iraqis have no logistical capability of their own.

—On John Bolton—

KONDRACKE: [The Senate] gave him no credit whatsoever. I mean, they didn’t change their minds; they wouldn’t give him a fresh look. I mean it’s funny that everybody’s giving Bob Gates a fresh look, but they wouldn’t give it to Bolton and they just decided they were going to exact this price, I guess, as part of the election.
BARNES: He’s been a spectacular ambassador to the U.N., of the Moynihan and Kirkpatrick type people who aggressively defend the American interests there, and to the extent — John Bolton was a little dubious of running American foreign policy through the United Nations and yet, when he was called on to do that, he did a great job.